The Zaha and Kane theory: Home is where the heart is

Daniel Storey

Every time you go to Selhurst Park, the matchday announcer makes a point of speaking to the mascots and asking them for their favourite Crystal Palace player. I’ve been to four Palace home games in the last year, and each time heard the same answer from every child: “Wilfried Zaha”. Were you aged between five and 15, you’d say the same – who else?

Zaha is Crystal Palace’s leader and their talisman. He takes shots more often than almost every other player, creates chances more often than every other player and completes dribbles more often than every other player. Palace have played ten league games without Zaha starting this season, and lost every one. They have scored four goals in those ten games; one of those was assisted by Zaha after he came on as a substitute against Chelsea and changed the game. Palace would already be relegated without him.

Yet Zaha’s majesty comes not in his numbers, but his confidence. A relegation dogfight is no place for expansive, attractive football, or so the theory goes. If Zaha’s natural talent allows him to stand out, it is his belief to express himself in the most difficult circumstances that sets him apart. It’s very easy to forget that this is only Zaha’s fourth season of regular Premier League football. He is the king of the top flight’s bottom half.

This confidence may come as a surprise to those who guided Zaha on his way to the Palace first team. Crystal Palace’s youth coaches speak of an unassuming introvert who had to be persuaded out of his shell.

You could hardly blame him. Zaha is the youngest of nine siblings in a family that moved to England from Ivory Coast’s capital Abidjan when he was just four. With 11 people squeezed into a three-bedroom house on Rothesay Road, the Selhurst Park floodlights rising above the tiled roofs of terraced housing, Zaha admits that life was tough. At night he would dream of playing for Palace and by day struggle to communicate with others at school, a native French speaker who had to learn English quickly. It was football that gave Zaha his belief.

Zaha had never strayed too far from the nest. He was schooled at Whitehorse Manor Junior School. Turn right out of the school’s entrance and immediately right again, and you are on Whitehorse Road. Within two minutes’ walk you can see the other end of Selhurst Park’s floodlights, this time peeking above a Sainsbury’s superstore. By the age of eight, Zaha was on Palace’s radar. By 12, he was part of the academy.

“I remember going to his house to sign his first professional contract,” former Palace manager Dougie Freedman told the Daily Telegraph in May 2016. “His dad, his brothers, his nephews were there. There were seven of us squeezed into the room. And this is true: He didn’t even ask to look at the contract. He trusted me, and he trusted Crystal Palace.”

This is not simply nostalgia for its own sake; it matters. The feeling amongst Palace supporters is that Zaha is powered not just by his natural ability, but by the shirt he is playing in. There’s something that comes from playing in front of people who you grew up round the corner from that ignites something extra within you, and it’s something that seems more rare than it used to be.

This is what we might call the Harry Kane principle, namely the theory that any young player must seek greener grass and increased financial reward might just be flawed. What happens if where you play matters as much as who you play for?

With Zaha, we have some evidence. Two months after turning 20, he signed for Manchester United. Zaha remembers sitting talking to Alex Ferguson and Bobby Charlton and being in disbelief at the magnitude of the move. But by the time he had arrived six months later, Ferguson had left. Six months after that, Zaha had been loaned out by David Moyes, a manager under pressure and therefore not prepared to take the risk. His Manchester United playing career consisted of 166 minutes.

Now the rumours will start again. Zaha’s impact this season and last was always likely to persuade wealthier clubs to make their move, and only a transfer fee of £50m (Zaha signed a new five-year contract last summer) might put them off. Tottenham are the most likely suitors.

Perhaps the United move came too early. Perhaps a different manager in a different situation would have given him more chances. Perhaps Zaha would thrive at Old Trafford in 2018. Perhaps he fancies the chance of thriving at Tottenham, closer to home.

But Zaha must realise more than most that there is an alternative explanation. Happiness is not just measured by which competitions you play in or how much you earn, but how much difference you make. Nobody has made more difference at Selhurst Park over the last five years.

“I’m the most local footballer you’ll probably see,” he said in 2015, discussing a community initiative in Croydon. “I’m just showing them if you put your mind to it in the future you could actually get somewhere.” Zaha is proof that “somewhere” might just be right on your doorstep. There’s nowhere quite like home.

Daniel Storey